Basic Consumer Health Information About Sleep and Its Disorders, Including Insomnia, Sleepwalking, Sleep Apmea, and Restlessness
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0780802349/top100
JOURNAL PAPERS
Hypofrontality in ADHD during higher-order motor control: an fMRI study.
--ADHD is associated with subnormal activation of the prefrontal systems responsible for higher-order motor control. Functional MRI is a feasible technique for investigation of neural correlates of ADHD.
Anterior cingulate cortex dysfunction in ADHD
--The Counting Stroop produced anterior cingulate activation in healthy adults, but not in ADHD individuals. ADHD subjects did activate a frontostriatal-insular network, as expected. The data support a hypothesized dysfunction of the Anterior cingulate cognitive division in ADHD.
EEG correlates of methylphenidate response among children with ADHD
--Children who exhibit a positive response to methylphenidate for ADHD had reductions of theta and alpha activity as well as increased beta in the frontal regions, while nonresponders showed the opposite pattern. Significant correlations between improvement on a vigilance task and changes in beta activity in the frontal electrodes emerged as well. the authors conclude that there are different electrophysiologic correlates to methylphenidate among ADHD children who are medication responders and nonresponders.
Intellectual and neuropsychological features of patients with psychogenic pseudoseizures.
--Studies have suggested that patients with psychogenic pseudoseizures may also have impaired neuropsychological function. A high incidence of impaired performance on the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery was found. The authors postulate that head trauma might be responsible for neuropsychological impairment in an appreciable number of the patients in this sample.
Posttraumatic stress symptoms in children following traumatic brain injury.
--Examined posttraumatic stress (PTS) symptoms in children following pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI). Parents of children with severe TBI reported higher levels of child PTS symptoms than did parents of children with moderate TBI or OI at the 6- and 12-month follow-ups.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation for the treatment of resistant major depression.
--Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) did not differ from sham treatment in treating depression (controlled randomized design, 18 subjects).
Sources of abnormal EEG activity in the presence of brain lesions.
--Results from a group of 13 patients with cortical space-occupying lesions provided strong support to the hypothesis that both delta and theta abnormal EEG activities are the counterparts of two different pathophysiological processes.
Symptom-based predictors of a 10-year chronic course of treated depression.
--Potential symptom-based risk factors were used to predict a chronic course of treated depression over a 10-year interval. Chronically depressed patient typically exhibit more severe symptoms of fatigue, loss of interest in usual activities, trouble sleeping, and thoughts about death or suicide; are not calm, successful, nor self-confident; and do not socialize with friends outside the home, and frequently coped with stressors by avoiding other people. The more risk factors exhibited, the more likely one would experience a chronic course. High-risk patients who received more psychological treatment, however, often underwent full or partial remission.
Validation of a right hemisphere vigilance system with QEEG
--QEEG during CPT task indicates the existence of a neurophysiological system located within the right temporal region that appears essential for the maintenance of a sustained attentional state. This neurocognitive system may prove useful as part of a clinical diagnostic workup.
Events & Locations
Advanced Training Courses
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BETA/SMR Advanced Practicum
with Sue Othmer
Topics Covered
Evaluating Raw EEGs
Spectral Density
Choosing Inhibit Filters
Coherence Training
New Protocols
Discussion of Difficult Cases
Clinical Strategies/Testing
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Alpha-Theta Advanced Practicum
with Bill Scott
Topics Covered
Guided Imagery
Interpreting Imagery
Working with Addictions
Facilitating Cross-Over
Recognizing Progress
When to bring in BETA/SMR
Alternative Protocols
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| 1999 Schedule
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| Encino, California | BETA/SMR Advanced Practicum | 9/22/99 Wed
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| Encino, California | Alpha-Theta Advanced Practicum | 9/28/99 Tue
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| New York, New York | BETA/SMR Advanced Practicum | 10/12/99 Tue
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| Austin, Texas | Alpha-Theta Advanced Practicum | 11/23/99 Tue
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| Beta-SMR Advanced Practicum Limit = 20 | Alpha-Theta Advanced Practicum Limit = 15
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| DATES*COSTS*LOCATIONS SUBJECT TO CHANGE
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PREREQUISITES FOR EITHER PRACTICUM:
- Completion of 1 EEG Spectrum International Biofeedback Training Course for Professionals
- EEG Biofeedback experience using NeuroCybernetics Instrumentation
Conferences for Neurofeedback Clinicians & Researchers
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| CONFERENCE | LOCATION | DATES |
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| SNR 1999 | Myrtle Beach, SC | Sep 30-Oct 3, 1999
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New Neurofeedback Clinicians / New Offices
Laurence Starr, Ed.D.
21 Mechanic St.
Camden, ME 04843
(207) 236-2893; Fax -0654
lstarr@midcoast.com
A.D.D. Treatment Center
Gary J. Schummer, M.Div., Ph.D.
24050 Madison St., Suite 111
Torrance, CA 90505
(310) 378-0547; Fax-0347
ADDCenters@cs.com
Daniel Parker, D.C.
Duc Ngoc Tran, D.O.
Cooperative Care Medical Group
27062 La Paz Rd.
Aliso Viejo, CA 92656
(949) 362-9230
Ron Bruder
43 W. Washington
Newnan, GA 30263
(404) 765-7454
rbruder@mail.newnanutilies.org
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Earlene Strayhorn,M.D.
1022 S. Oak Park Ave
Oak Park, IL 60304
(708) 750-4360
stanwest@msc.com
Andrea J. Sime, LMSW
Lincoln Beh. Healt Clinic
1919 S 40th St, Suite 212
lincoln, NC 68506-5243
(402) 441-9280
asime@inetnebr.com
Dr. Shandor Weiss
Arura Clinic
233 4th St
Ashland, OR 97520-2043
(541) 488-1198
J.D. Elder, M.S., P.T.
1598 W Brook View Lane
St. George, UT 84770
(435)-673-7081
elder@infowest.com
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Last Word
Information wants to be free
by David A. Kaiser, Ph.D.
Ever take a family pet to the vet? Be it teeth cleaning, jaw reconstruction, or reproductive snipping, whatever the catastrophe, something always astounds me about the vet. I've taken cats with lymphoma, immune disorders, and acronyms I now forget across town. Most recovered after the trip, a few did not. When my largest cat decided to spend two or three of his nine lives awhile back, having contracting "fever of unknown origin", the overnight stay in the animal hospital cost 180 dollars. $180 for room and board and a healthy dose of poking and prodding and drugs. Had these procedures been performed on a human in a hospital, which I wouldn't recommend, the bill would have staggered us. But because a veternarian carried out the procedure, it cost a (relative) pittance.
A few years ago my father shelled out $600 to treat Stevie. It was a fortune, he still reminds us to this day, but it was also the last pet still with us from our childhood. And you should have seen what the vet had to work with. We gave the vet a 12-year old cat unable to climb stairs, too feeble to eat, full-body shivers, and the weakest purr you ever heard. A week or so later, we got back five more years -- happy, healthy, purring like a motorboat, years. 33 cents a day, when you figure it out. Money well spent.
You can't charge more than the animal is worth, they say. Charge too much and Fluffy becomes a permanent guest. ($600 came very, very close to that limit.)
But this adage is not really true for this profession. Given the importance of the family pet to the mental and emotional health of the children underfoot, a vet could easily charge 10 or 15 times more, knowing full well that Mother will make Father pay it in full. But this hasn't yet happened.
We've all paid extortionate prices for an item or two in our lives, and more and more companies and institutions are realizing how much blood can come from stone, but I'm happy to find certain professionals bringing up the rear on this business practice.
But now we've reach my primary concern. Academic publishing. It may not be grand marshal of this parade, the Blood-out-of-Stone Extravaganza, but it also isn't the local junior high school band bringing up the rear.
Last week I spent four hours in the biomedical library, searching in vain for a handful of recently published papers; only to learn that UCLA, home of the Brain Research Institute, no longer subscribed to a good third of the journals I required. And these were mainstream scientific journals. What particularly irked me was the absence of recent volumes of Biological Psychiatry, one of the few journals I have come back to again and again. Why had the bureaucrats at UCLA decided against subscribing to such a useful journal? That was my question/my quest.
A brief foray into cyburbia revealed the answer...
$ 1525.00...
the cost for one-years subscription.
Surely by accident the decimal point migrated one place eastward for the summer, don't you think? I could understand 150 dollars for a year of thick (and not so thick) journals, but 12 or 24 issues for the price of a big-screen TV? Never! For their fortune UCLA would acquire about 2000 pages of text and a score of color figures, all in softcover. For the same amount, a dozen or so textbooks could be purchased, hard bound, glossy pages, 6000 pages or more. (Or better yet, 146 paperback editions of
The Fermata, a sexy story of time stoppage, 35,000 pages, very interesting and highly-readable pages.)
Is Biological Psychiatry worth each year a large-screen TV? Can the publisher justify the prices they charge libraries? "Well, given the limited run, the importance of the work, the newly invented color-laminating-dye process, blah blah blah" The real question to ask is should the dissemination of scientific knowledge be so hindered.
A quick search of the publisher's website revealed the prices:
| Journal | Per Year | Per issue
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| Aggression and Violent Behavior
| $ 318
| $ 80
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| Behavioural Brain Research
| $ 3197
| $ 159
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| Biological Psychiatry
| $ 1525
| $ 64
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| Drug and Alcohol Dependence
| $ 1138
| $ 95
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| Journal of Affective Disorders
| $ 1726
| $ 115
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| Journal of Neuroscience Methods
| $ 2878
| $ 159
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| Journal of Psychiatric Research
| $ 699
| $ 117
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| Neuropsychologia
| $ 1919
| $ 148
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| Neuroscience
| $ 5365
| $ 192
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Compared to other journals, at $64 every two weeks, Biological Psychiatry was a bargain....
The same website boasts a "Neuroscience Package" with great savings for librarians -- 9 journals for only $18,985.00. Get serious. Mortgages are lower! Hire a thousand typing monkeys and stand back. Granted, these are all "institution prices" and an individual can typically subscribe for 10% of the price, but charging an institution a 900% markup over private subscriptions hurts everyone (except the publisher, of course). This publisher is not alone in setting skyhigh prices for academic journals. Nowadays most academic periodicals cost the same as the thicker and better produced textbooks, often sold by the same publisher.
There must be a better way.
And of course there is. The Internet; the Web. I realized the power of web publishing last year when articles I had written solely for online readers were cited five times in recent printed journals. (All that and no fickle peer-review.... hmmmm.)
My favorite journal, Behavioral & Brain Sciences (BBS), has a preprint archive online - http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/. The archive actually generates content for the printed journal by attracting commentaries that are only published in the paper version. Tonight I discovered Paul Nunez's most recent paper on EEG in this archive, a paper not to be printed in ink for another year. Online publishing is gaining ground on printing house, due to its many advantages, speed just being one of them. Another is searchability. Try searching for any article published before 1964. A third is easy re-distribution. A fourth is easy modification -- or is that a disadvantage. A fifth is the nature of thought, which is rarely serial and better served by hypertext than constant authorial dictation. Online can also be a dumping ground, for good and evil, of animations, sounds, and other supplementary information that clarifies or supports one's published work.
Like BBS, the Journal of Neurotherapy follows a similar tack, placing entire issues online one year after publication. Other journals provide full text articles online to print subscribers or charge a cheaper rate than print subscriptions for their viewing. ...Merely fingers in the dike.
Physicists are breaking free from brick-and-mortar publishing houses altogether. arXiv.org e-Print archive at http://xxx.lanl.gov/ distributes full text preprints of articles in every conceivable (and inconceivable) field of physics. This has been going on since 1991. Physicists have also created entire peer-reviewed e-journals without ink-and-paper counterparts. Molecular biologists have also read the handwriting on the monitor and followed suit. For example, check out Molecular Vision, a new e-journal, which, like the tree-based mediums, has its contents indexed in Medline, PubMed, Index Medicus, Science Citation Index, Current Contents, etc. And most importantly, access to this journal is entirely free of charge.
Which coincidentally happens to be the price of this newsletter.
Because information wants to be free.
Two important and related papers were recently published by Richard Davidson's lab (
Laboratory of Affective Disorders at U Wisconsin): Relations between PET-derived measures of thalamic glucose metabolism and EEG alpha power; and
Thalamic metabolic rate predicts EEG alpha power in healthy control subjects but not in depressed patients.
Davidson has spent the last 25 years investigating brain mechanisms and processes responsible for the generation and regulation of affective and motivational states.
His lab uses quantitative electrophysiology (QEEG), positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with normal and clinical populations.
Early work found an association between positive and negative emotions and asymmetric activation in the frontal lobes, usually measured by QEEG.
Their recent work examined the mechanism which is responsible for alpha activity in the human QEEG.
For the better part the mystery was solved -- at least in animals. But speciation rears its head and asks, what about humans? Is the mechanism responsible for alpha activity in animals the same in humans? Given that most Human Subject Protection Committees frown on decortication or other invasive techniques, we must turn to neuroimaging and less direct measurements.
One limitation of the described approach (from the 1st paper) was lack of isolation of the thalamus. The location of the thalamus was obtained indirectly, by using atlas-based coordinates over the entire PET output. The second paper corrected this, using structural MRI to isolate the thalamus, to thus better measure its activity. (For instance, no spatial filtering was needed with this method.) In the latter paper, the expected robust correlations between metabolic activity in the thalamus and alpha activity on the scalp were observed in normal subjects, but these correlations were missing in depressed patients. Something was amiss in these poor fellows' brains. Lindgren et al argued, according to the abstact, for a "possible abnormality in thalamocortical circuitry associated with depression". What a great finding! And so relevant to neurofeedback!
Understanding, Diagnosing, and Treating Ad/Hd in Children and Adolescents : An Integrative Approach
Interventions for ADHD: Treatment in Developmental Context
Brain Function and Oscillations: Integrative Brain Function
Strong Feelings: Emotion, Addiction, and Human Behavior